Reviving Tinkerbell
by eena-angel2001
Summary: “He was used to making girls cry. But then again, those were usually happy tears. These weren’t happy tears and the sight of her crying made him feel like an idiot for the first time in his life.” Rock Star meets reality-and flips out-LN Companion piece.
1. Chapter 1

Title: Reviving Tinkerbell

Author: Eena

Rating: 13

Disclaimer: Don't own 'em.

Spoilers: "Chasing the Dream", "That Ding You Do", and "Love Sick" specifically.

Summary: "He was used to making girls cry. But then again, those were usually happy tears. These weren't happy tears and the sight of her crying made him feel like an idiot for the first time in his life." Rock Star meets reality-and flips out. Companion piece to "Losing Neverland".

**A/N:** Ask and you shall receive! Nick's POV of all things "Losing Neverland". These will most likely be shorter chapters than LN, but it's all Nick, all the time-that counts for something, right?

~Never Grow Up~

He was used to making girls cry. It happened without him doing much of anything. He just had to step out on stage, smile a little smile and the weeping would begin. But then again, those were usually happy tears. It was amazing the depth of feeling fans had for him and his music. Every time he saw them begin to tear up he was hit with the sheer magnitude of it all. Every tear, every quiet sob, every outstretched hand-that meant more to him than all the record sales in the world (not to be glib-the record sales were cool in their own way).

However, this wasn't exactly the same situation. The tears he was seeing right now were not the tears he was used to. These weren't happy tears and the sight of her crying made him feel like an idiot for the first time in his life.

The plan had seemed brilliant just hours before. In fact, he had gone so far as to declare it foolproof. Joe and Kevin had agreed with him, which wasn't much of a surprise since all their planning had wrought was Kevin squeaking his way through a conversation with Macy and none of the brothers able to do what was necessary. It wasn't that they liked lying to Macy; it was just that they weren't sure how to phrase the truth delicately. She seemed so sure in her ability (Stella was getting the full blame for this delusion) and watching his brothers flounder and hang themselves wasn't getting them anywhere. That's when the light bulb went off in his head. Find a way to let Macy record without ever letting anyone hear it, or let Macy know that they hadn't used it. It seemed like a win-win situation. They wouldn't subject Malcolm Meckles to THAT and Macy would never have to hear that her singing resembled the sounds of a dying manatee.

Of course, the idea that something could go horribly wrong with any plan of his had not crossed the mind of any Lucas brother (although Frankie probably could have predicted this one). Meckles was early, Macy was unusually quiet slipping out of the recording studio, and all three of them had run off at the mouth in the worst way possible. He was supposed to be the smart one. It should have occurred to him at some point that Macy was being too quiet, that Dad had been looking at something important just past their shoulders, and that blurting out to others that Macy's singing was torture wasn't a good idea considering they were just praising it seconds ago.

But it didn't occur to him. It didn't occur to any of them. And just like that, his brilliant plan transformed into the stupidest thing he had ever done.

Since first meeting Macy Misa, Nick had noticed that the girl had an almost scary amount of exuberance. She was happy with just about everything. Macy always had a skip in her step, a smile on her face, and a breathless way of responding to everything. It was like the girl was on hyper-speed all the time. Initially it had been troublesome (especially when that hyper-speed gave Macy the ability to incapacitate all three Lucas brothers in under a minute) but at that moment Nick would have happily taken a hockey stick to the head if it meant erasing the heartbreak from her features.

The tear tracks on her face looked horribly out of place. And the look in her eyes was horrific. Nick had done some less than nice things in his life (he wasn't above playing dirty tricks on his brothers-mostly because they weren't above playing dirty tricks on him), but this way worse than any of that. Just looking at her, at the sheer devastation on her face, Nick felt his heart stop.

And when she took off running, he could barely hear Kevin calling after her. He didn't notice Dad talking quietly to Meckles as he showed him the way out. He didn't hear Joe kick over the trash bin and declare this to be the worst plan in the history of plans. He couldn't deal with any of it because all he could see was tears, all he could hear was sobs, and all he could feel was his heart, still and lifeless inside his chest.

This wasn't just bad. This was damn near apocalyptic.

It wasn't just that Stella was going to kill them (and she would definitely try to kill them) and it wasn't that Dad was going to give them a lecture on maturity (coupled with the dreaded 'I'm so very disappointed' face). It was that Macy Misa, the insanely happy, JONAS-obsessed, sports star, almost friend of theirs had trusted them, believed them, and then had her heart shattered when she found out that they lied.

There was a fight that night, a fight like they hadn't had in years. Joe blamed Nick, Kevin blamed Nick, and then he blamed them and then they blamed it on each other. It wasn't until Stella came over and told them to shut up and fix it that the fight had ended. Stella wasn't interested in who came up with the plan (because they had all agreed to it, right?) and she didn't care who started this in the first place (Kevin wasn't the only one who didn't tell Macy the truth). All Stella cared about was that her best friend was upset, hurt, and crying. It was unimaginable, unfathomable, and unforgiveable. And JONAS better fix it.

But how do you fix something like this? Stella suggested honesty, but Nick wondered if it wasn't too late for that. Macy already knew the truth-it was the delivery of it that was the problem (and all the previous lying). But Stella was firm on the matter; an apology would be good as long as they get it all out there. Complete and utter honesty was the only remedy.

They had discussed various approaches, and even rehearsed a few different ways of going about it. But when it was time, Kevin stepped out in front. Nick listened to his argument for about half a second before (quite shamelessly) he agreed to let his older brother take the fall. It was the coward's way out because while Kevin might have felt responsible for starting this mess, Nick was the one who let it get so far out of control. And while his brain was shouting at him that this action would be insufficient, his mouth didn't get the message and his legs were too busy carrying him far away from the impending confrontation.

Whatever was said, whatever Kevin did, his eldest brother came back from the meeting with a relieved look on his face. There had been all of five minutes to get the news out of him, head to his locker, and make it to English Lit on time, but Nick managed. Joe and Stella had waited with him, even though their classes were much farther away and that by waiting around for even a minute would make them late. However, in the light of recent events, making sure everything was all right with Macy Misa was unequivocally more important than the stigmata of tardiness.

Kevin reported that the apology went fine. Macy was understanding, sweet even, and after Kevin was just plain honest with her, everything had been set right. Joe heaved a huge sigh of relief while Stella beamed a brilliant smile that just screamed 'I told you so'. Nick was so grateful for the news that he overlooked this gloating on the part of his friend and soon all four were breaking and making for class like it was any other day. Crisis averted, all wrongs mended-things were looking to be turning out all right once again.

His overabundance of positivity lasted until the start of English Lit.

Initially he had been slightly dismayed by the prospect of having Macy Misa in a class with him. Her behaviour in the hallways had led him to believe that his English Lit experience might be riddled with fainting spells and concussions. However, other than the obsessive urge to sit behind him and just stare at the back of his head (he could feel her doing it even if he never turned around to acknowledge it), Macy was pretty quiet during class. And since she was right at the top of class for marks, she appeared to be able to evenly divide her attention between the teacher and her need to stare at Nick.

All of this was done without the slightest interruption to him, which he appreciated since some girls just spent all class giggly and trying to get him to look their way. Macy didn't do that; other than being fiercely obsessive of her seat right behind him, she really didn't do anything too fangirl-ish. He had mentioned it to Stella once only to have the blonde roll her eyes at him. It was then that she reminded Nick that Macy was also a nationally-ranked athlete who needed to keep a certain grade point average if she was to be allowed to take as many sports as she did. And yes while she was very much into JONAS, Macy was actually dedicated to her sports. And if that meant stifling that inner fangirl for just one period a day, Macy could handle that. Besides, there was also plenty of non-class time in which Macy could (and did) freak out about her favourite band being in her school.

So that day, after everything had been said and Kevin had given them the all-clear, Nick was actually looking forward to having Macy sit behind him. He felt confident that once she was seated, he could turn around and add his own personal apology to the one Kevin had given before. Things had gone very wrong yesterday, but he had learned from his mistakes. They would be starting anew today; perhaps there was a chance to develop a friendship with her like the one he had with Stella.

And he firmly believed this until the bell rang and he realized that she was NOT sitting behind him. Class had begun, students were taking out paper and pens, and he was searching the room for the girl who should have been right behind him. Maybe she was running late? Maybe she had to go see another teacher or her coach before the bell?

Or maybe she had snuck in at the last second and took the seat closest to the door and farthest from him.

Nick turned around in his seat, eyes on the chalkboard but his brain not processing the material there. Macy was sitting in the back; she had consciously decided not to sit behind him. And even now, she was steadfastly looking anywhere but at him. All the information came together and crowded around in his mind until he stumbled upon the most obvious solution. Nick groaned and felt like bashing his head repeatedly upon his desk.

Macy was still mad.

~*~


	2. Shadow Hunting

A/N: Many apologies! I am so sorry it took so long for me to update! Life got hectic, and I was on vacation, and yadda yadda yadda. Hopefully it won't always be this long between updates. Thanks to all my reviewers (**LoVet, DiBye, sailor-diamondrose-a.k.a-darcy, JClayton, Sango A.R., Sweetgalsab, Hey-Hayley, suburbs, Lady Paine, anglhededhpster**). I hope you're all still interested.

~Shadow Hunting~

Stella Malone was an expert at avoidance. He hadn't really noticed his friend's unique talent before, but ever since he began voicing his concerns about Macy's behaviour, Stella started blinding him with all sorts of diversionary tactics.

Of course, to be fair, he wasn't exactly voicing his concerns about Macy. It was more like he was badgering Stella incessantly (and often at outrageously inappropriate times) about Macy's continuing anger towards JONAS. He had thought, being the girl's best friend, that when he first shared his theory with Stella that she would be all over the situation. Now, granted, there were quite a few real situations that cropped up since that day (it was a miracle Stella hadn't murdered Joe for ruining her date with Van Dyke so completely), but none of it excused her extreme lack of action on the Macy front.

He told her so to her face. And then immediately apologized because she got that crazy look in her eyes (crazy-Stella is easy to spot-the widening of the eyes, the darkening of the blue of her irises, and the very thin line she set her lips into). Luckily, he avoided serious damage and was quite sternly told to 'leave it to the expert'.

Well, 'the expert' had been at it for a week and had absolutely zilch to show for it. Nick considered telling Stella that her lack of results was unacceptable, but then he remembered what she did to Joe in England and well-it wasn't worth it. Besides, the way Macy was talking these days (not that she knew that he was listening), Nick figured that there was no use in waiting for Stella. Macy needed his help-and fast.

It wasn't just the whole 'look at me-I'm so mature' phase she was going through (and seriously-bragging about how you're so much more mature than everyone else actually makes you look less mature than everyone else). It was the fact that Macy had this knee-jerk angry reaction to anything JONAS. If she saw a poster, heard a song, or overheard a conversation pertaining to JONAS, she either turned on her heel or forcefully changed topics. It was beyond bizarre (wasn't she supposed to be their number one superfan?). Not to mention all the other stuff: the running late to class to avoid JONAS members, the complicated walks around the school to negate the possibility of running into a JONAS, and (the worst by far) the changing of her locker. Macy had done quite a number of scary things to get a locker that was in the same hallway as her (former) favourite band. There had been whispers of certain terrifying behaviour before the former owner of that locker vacated it for her.

And now, after all that, Macy turned around and bullied a freshman out of a locker located at the very end of the school. Seriously? A locker by the gym? That was the worst (not to mention the smelliest) part of the school to have a locker. Freshmen were relegated to that part of the school simply because (in terms of high school at least) they were on the bottom of the social hierarchy. No one ever willingly wants to have a locker there.

It was obvious (well, to him maybe-because Joe and Kevin still hadn't realized something was off) that Macy was not handling her anger all too well. Her behaviour clearly pointed out that she needed to address her problems head on. Avoidance had only served to her drive slightly (maybe more than slightly) crazy in her attempt to act like nothing was wrong. And while crazy and Macy Misa weren't new acquaintances, this time the crazy was not healthy (was there ever a time that crazy was healthy?)

He explained this to Stella, calmly and without sarcasm this time. She rolled her eyes, shook her head, and then finally relented to the fact that he was right. Macy was not handling her problems in the best way. She was, in fact, not handling them period. She was repressing and turning her entire focus in another direction so that she wouldn't have to hand her problems. Stella knew that; she had known it from the beginning (and this was the part where she reminded him who was best friends with whom).

Macy had (apparently) never handled transitioning all that well. When she was into something, she was all in (and this was the part where he reminded Stella that he had the bruises to prove that). Usually it wasn't so dramatic; sometimes Macy just found something that she liked better than what she liked before. Or she couldn't make up her mind about what she liked better and just went with all it (thus her captainship of every girl's sport team in the school). But she never wasted the time avoiding her past interests to such an extreme degree. Macy went from zero to turbo in seconds, but she was also pretty good at letting things go. This was the first time Stella ever remembered her friend holding a grudge. And she was holding hard.

But that didn't mean Stella couldn't handle it. Apparently Stella could handle anything Macy related (though he hadn't seen any evidence of that in the past few weeks) and she was on top of the situation. With a pat on the shoulder that was a tad too forceful, Stella told him to let it go and just wait for her to make her move.

Somehow Stella's move involved a childish bet with Macy about texting and something called a 'mature revelation'. He hadn't been impressed; he told her he wasn't impressed. And then she tried to phantom text him a frowny face and he gave up because he couldn't handle Stella jabbing him repeatedly (apparently his 'Send' button was located just under his Adam's Apple-and he wasn't waiting for Stella to misjudge and stab him in the throat with one of her nails). Besides, Joe managed to distract him well enough with his out-of-nowhere obsession with cello girl and suddenly Nick was in the school band.

His brothers (his entirely too oblivious brothers) never clued into a thing. Even after of near three weeks of Macy-free school days, they didn't notice. Only after the concert, standing in front of the main stairs, and somehow managing to catch Macy on her way down (this had to qualify as some sort of miracle considering how obsessively Macy had been navigating the halls in her attempt to avoid JONAS) did one of his brothers finally see the light.

"Macy! Where have you been?"

Any other day Kevin's question might have made him roll his eyes in aggravation (because seriously-how dense do you have to be to not notice that one of your friends hasn't spoken to you in three weeks?), but not today. He fixed his eyes on Macy's face, waiting to see what she would do. There was a definite deer-in-the-headlights expression on her face and Nick was starting to see the advantages of a head-on confrontation. Macy couldn't avoid the issue if the issue were right in front of her.

But, as luck would have it, Stella got in the way again. Of course, this time it was unintentional (her texting obsession was a scary thing to see in action), but the results were the same. Stella ran (rampaged a la Tasmanian Devil) into the hall, snatched back her phone, and in the shock of the moment, Macy slipped away.

To his brothers' credit, he honestly didn't think they would notice. But after having a (very quiet) chuckle at Stella's expense, both Joe and Kevin turned back to the stairs and finally clued into the obvious.

Kevin put on a disappointed face and asked: "Where's Macy?"

Joe looked up and down the hallway and then asked (in a highly incredulous tone): "Did she seriously just run off on _us_?"

He could almost see the wheels starting to turn (slowly and haltingly-but still, turning) and he would like to think they would have gotten it all on their own-but then the bell went. And as his brothers could barely focus on one thing at a time, getting to class replaced their curiosity over Macy's behaviour. Stella too (after she texted ten or a hundred messages) ran off to class without a thought to what had almost just happened. He was starting to worry about everyone's complete lack of comprehension-but he put it off for later.

Right now, he had a plan.

Granted it wasn't a very intricate plan. Actually, it was downright simple. It was something he should have done that very first day, but he had a rare brain fart and instead invested his hopes on Stella (and he wasn't criticizing her-he just realized that he could have handled it better, and weeks ago). And it had everything to do with what had almost just happened.

He was going to confront Macy Misa (let's see her avoid him when he's right in front of her). It wasn't the most subtle of plans, but he figured it was way past the time for subtle. Macy needed an intervention; he was going to provide it.

He was determined, he was certain. He was so confident that he walked right into the library, tracked down his prey, and stared her down (well, he would stare her down as soon as he got her to look up from her book).

"You've been avoiding us."

A small part of him was feeling kind of smug by what happened next. Macy jumped, obviously surprised that he had managed to track her down (all her avoidance probably had her thinking she was pretty sneaky or something). Wide brown eyes stared at him for a split second before snapping to the left. Why Macy felt the need to blame the librarian for this (because her look was three different kinds of _glare_) he didn't know, but he wasn't letting her get away from him now.

"Not talking to me won't change the fact that I'm here." Okay, now a larger part of him was feeling smug (she was trapped-and they both knew it). He pulled up a chair and sat directly across from her, noting the slightly defeated look on her face (why hadn't he done this before?). "You're avoiding us. You don't say hi in the halls, if we ever see you in the halls, which we don't nowadays. You swapped lockers so now yours is down by the gym and pretty far from us. And you never sit right behind me in English Lit anymore, even though you used to threaten anyone who took that seat before you. My brothers might not have caught onto the situation as quickly as me, but even they'll get it sooner or later. You're still mad."

She was caught; there was no way out. The revelation wasn't doing wonders for her mood and Nick could see her struggling with her irritation. Finally, she slapped a weak smile on her face, turned her eyes back to the librarian, and tried her hand at weaselling out of it. "I've just been busy. You know, school, sports, and work stuff."

The excuse would have looked if the smile had been real and she could manage to look him in the eyes (time to step it up a notch). "Your locker?"

"I wanted one closer to the gym so it would be easier getting to practice after school."

Lame. "You begged, bribed, and threatened your way into getting a locker in the same hall as us, and then you just gave it up? Just like that?"

She winced-he won.

"And what about the whole sitting on the opposite side of the room? You never used to do that."

He had her; he knew he had her. And she knew it too (if the look on her face was any indication). He watched her fidget, content that she had no way out at this point. She was going to have to deal with it (them) now, whether she liked it or not.

She did not like it.

"You know what Nick? Not everything is about you."

He had a picture of Macy Misa in his mind, one that had been developing since the first day he met her. In it, she was smiling big and wide and her eyes were sparkling with warmth (not to mention a slightly obsessive twinkle that shone off and on at intervals). And he had that picture for a reason; Macy Misa was a generally happy, unfailingly sweet girl. She might get a bit passionate about things at times, but at heart, she was a sweet girl. Stella told them all the time, and everyone else agreed. Macy was nice, she was kind, and she was always happy.

That picture of Macy Misa seemed to rip in half right before his eyes as the downright _venomous_ tone of her words reached his ears. He was shocked; he wasn't prepared for that. He figured there might be a few tense moments when Macy finally admitted she was still mad and the two of them worked through the problem. Or that Macy might get a bit huffy and try to avoid the issue, but his dogged persistence would bring the truth pouring out. Every way he had managed this going, it all ended the same way. Macy expressed her anger, he empathized and apologized, and then the two of them would come to a resolution that would have Macy smiling and not avoiding JONAS like the plague.

He was starting to think that either he wasn't as smart as he thought, or he was more naive than he wanted to admit. Whatever the truth, Macy fixed him with a heated glare, grabbed her things, and ran off before he could formulate a response. And he (genius that he was) watched her go with his mouth still hanging open.

Why hadn't he waited for Stella?

~*~


End file.
